


there is nothing in the world that we can count on (even that we will wake up is an assumption)

by procrastinatingbookworm



Series: Hello, I'm good for nothing - will you love me just the same? [6]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: How Do I Tag, M/M, Religious Discussion, Spoilers, Worldbuilding, and all the lovely lovely things that come with one religion stepping all over another, and the destruction of a language, discussions of Genocide, how the fuck do i even tag this, oh boy, so like, spoilers out the fuckin wazoo, this isn't about literal judaism but it's definitely themed heavily in that direction, uhhh, um
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:47:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26977570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: A terrible discovery.
Relationships: Quirrel & Tiso (Hollow Knight), Quirrel/Tiso (Hollow Knight)
Series: Hello, I'm good for nothing - will you love me just the same? [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1957039
Comments: 12
Kudos: 94





	there is nothing in the world that we can count on (even that we will wake up is an assumption)

They don’t find a room, when they break the wall hollow.

They don’t even find a cavern.

They find a great edifice hewn from stone, buried in Greenpath’s heart, as large as the entire town of Dirtmouth.

Tiso reaches out, without taking his eyes from the structure, and grasps Quirrel’s hand, squeezing tight. There’s a chill to the air, deep and pervasive, something foreboding to the heaviness of the stone around them. 

Tiso’s been in caves before. In deeper, darker caves than this. Caves twice as cold, caves with crumbling ceilings. Caves full of bodies. 

None disturbed him as much as this room does.

“We shouldn’t be here,” Tiso says, forcing himself to loosen his grip on Quirrel’s hand before he hurts him.

“Nonsense,” Quirrel replies, but he doesn’t sound sure. “We’ve found the place, it’s our duty to uncover it.”

Tiso keeps hold of Quirrel’s hand, and takes a step forward. Quirrel steps to keep up, and Tiso keeps going, feeling his way through the dark, toes scuffing along the ground to ensure he doesn’t trip.

It just keeps getting darker.

Tiso's just about decided to go back, dragging Quirrel along with him if he has to, when golden light flares up on his left.

Quirrel’s grip goes tight enough to ache.

It’s one of the carved stone tablets, like at Hallownest’s entrance and hidden throughout its corridors, only glowing gold instead of white.

And not in Wyrmtongue, either. For once. Tiso’s utterly exhausted with struggling through the cryptic written form of the Mad Kingdom’s language.

Quirrel’s violent grasp on his hand relaxes. “I wonder what it says,” he murmurs.

Tiso stares at him, bewildered,wondering if he should be offended. “You… what? It’s…you… are you making fun of me? Just because I don’t read your language well doesn’t mean I’m—”

Quirrel blinks at him. “You know what it says?” he asks, and Tiso’s not entirely sure he would know if Quirrel was joking, but he doesn’t think he is, at the moment.

“Well,  _ obviously _ .” Tiso hasn’t the foggiest idea why Quirrel wouldn’t know it. “It’s not even complicated, for Dreamtongue. Even if you don’t know it, you must recognize the arrival prayer.”

Another blank stare. Tiso feels sick, though he isn’t sure why.

“What do your—” Tiso realizes he doesn’t know the Wyrmtongue word for what he means. “Your, your religious leaders. Do you even  _ have— _ ?”

Tiso hasn’t seen a single moth since he arrived in Hallownest. He hasn’t seen a single writing in Dreamtongue, or a prayer carved into a doorway, or a spirograph.

Tiso’s stomach drops. Quirrel is staring at him, hand loose in his, caught between confusion and fear. 

The Pale King. The sickly orange glow.

Wyrmtongue.

Tiso starts to laugh.

“I had wondered,” he murmurs, over Quirrel’s worried stammering. “I had wondered what you’d done to earn Her wrath. I’d  _ wondered…” _

“Tiso,” Quirrel says. “What are you talking about?”

“The Radiance, Q. The God of Gods, Queen of Dreams, the Old Light, Creation Herself. Patron of the Moth Tribe and all those who shape dreams.”

Quirrel’s eyes are wide.

Tiso curls his hands into fists. “What caused the Infection?”

“The Light,” Quirrel says, tonelessly, like he’s reciting. “The Old Light, taking revenge on the Pale King for usurping her throne and bringing sentience to her drones.”

“Is that what he told you?” Tiso asks. He draws breath to laugh, but his body shakes noiselessly with the blooming terror of it. “I suppose bugs do like to believe they’re special.”

Quirrel is very, very still. “‘The last and only civilization’,” he recounts. “A lie, of course. You needn’t go far from Hallownest to find other bugs, as sentient as any within it. You needn’t even leave.” Quirrel squeezes Tiso’s hands. “There are always visitors to prove that there’s a world outside.”

The golden light reflects off Quirrel’s mask. Tiso’s shell itches with the urge to flee.

“There aren’t any moths, Q,” Tiso says, voice breaking around the scream lodged in his throat. “There aren’t any… of course there wouldn’t be, they’re Her… Her devoted, Her First Children… of course he would…”

Tiso’s mind skirts the obvious conclusion.

Quirrel looks as sickened as Tiso feels. “So all this…” he gestures, not at their discovery, but out through the alcove, at Hallownest.

“A power struggle between gods,” Tiso confirms. He can hear his voice thickening, accented to the point of dropped syllables, sibilants hissing and nasals sticking syrupy to the rest of the word. “With lifespans of epochs and a certainty that they know best.”

Quirrel makes a noise of pain, like something’s been carved out of him. “She works in dreams,” he says.

“In belief,” Tiso says. “You can’t cut out a belief—” 

“You can’t cut out an infection,” Quirrel says, in that same toneless voice of recitation. “You can only kill the source.”

Tiso’s vision goes white at the corners. He can hear his own breath, noisy and violent. “That’s a prayer,” he chokes. It takes all his concentration to speak the language he knows Quirrel will understand. “That’s, it’s, it’s, that’s a prayer. It’s the Promise. You can’t cut out a belief, even if you kill the source.”

“Even if?” Quirrel echoes.

“It’s a promise,” Tiso says, pulling from Quirrel’s grip to wipe his eyes with the heel of his hand. “And your king bastardized it into… what? A war cry?”

“A justification,” Quirrel says, hands grasping Tiso’s again, as soon as it’s back in reach. “For all He did in the name of containing the Infection.”

Something curls up and dies in Tiso’s chest, as he watches heartbreak dawn on Quirrel’s face.

“Oh,” Quirrel says, in the smallest voice Tiso’s ever heard. “Oh, Madame. Oh, I’m sorry. It was all a lie. I’m sorry, Madame. I’m sorry, I should have known, Madame.”

Tiso holds his hand tightly and thinks of the pale knight, their nail dripping orange and their eyes dripping black.

He wonders if they know what they’re trying to kill.

**Author's Note:**

> Bug Who Thought He'd Lost All Hope Loses Last Additional Bit Of Hope He Didn't Even Know He Still Had


End file.
